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The jobless rate ticked up to 11.6 percent from the 11.5 percent in August, as 146,000 more people were classified as unemployed, data showed on Wednesday.

China's economy will likely "look good" early next year, but the medium- to long-term outlook is worrisome as the country loses its labor-cost edge, a state researcher said.

The euro-zone economy continued to shrink in October but at a slower pace than in recent months, an early gauge of activity showed, while a rise in consumer sentiment in Germany bolstered hopes that the slowdown there will be brief.

In spite of years of harsh spending cuts and tax increases, Europe's debt problems are getting worse. Figures from the EU's statistics office Wednesday showed that, at the end of the second quarter, the total government debt of the 17 countries that use the single currency was worth 90 percent of the group's total economic output for the year - the highest level since the euro was launched in 1999.

Warren Buffett sees clear signs that the global economy is slowing, although the U.S. economy is "inching ahead" as other regions decline, the Berkshire Hathaway chief executive officer said on Wednesday.

Chinese Internet users who watched live streams of Monday’s U.S. presidential debate heard President Obama and Republican challenger Mitt Romney criticizing China with some of their toughest language of the campaign – which many Chinese assume the candidates will dial down once the election is over.

New economic data from China on Thursday showed that the world’s second-largest economy after the United States expanded at its slowest pace since 2009 during the third quarter of this year — though surprisingly strong data for the month of September also showed that the deceleration may, for now at least, have come to an end.

China posted monthly trade and money-supply data that offered a positive sign for the world's No. 2 economy ahead of what's expected to be the weakest quarterly economic growth report in more than three years.

A cautious outlook from aluminum company Alcoa Inc. weighed on markets Wednesday as it reinforced investors' concerns about the global economic recovery.

A weaker forecast of economic growth in Asia is sending stocks lower in early trading on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average is down 47 points at 13,563 shortly after the opening bell Monday morning. The Standard & Poor's 500 index fell seven points to 1,454 and the Nasdaq composite gave up 22 points to 3,113.